Climate change impacts of power generation from residual biomass

Abstract

The European Union relies largely on bioenergy to achieve its climate and energy targets for 2020 and beyond. We assess, using Attributional Life Cycle Assessment (A-LCA), the climate change mitigation potential of three bioenergy power plants fuelled by residual biomass compared to a fossil system based on the European power generation mix. We study forest residues, cereal straws and cattle slurry. Our A-LCA methodology includes: i) supply chains and biogenic-CO2 flows; ii) explicit treatment of time of emissions; iii) instantaneous and time-integrated climate metrics. Power generation from cereal straws and cattle slurry can provide significant global warming mitigation by 2100 compared to current European electricity mix in all of the conditions considered. The mitigation potential of forest residues depends on the decay rate considered. Power generation from forest logging residues is an effective mitigation solution compared to the current EU mix only in conditions of decay rates above 5.2% a−1. Even with faster-decomposing feedstocks, bioenergy temporarily causes a STR(i) and STR(c) higher than the fossil system. The mitigation potential of bioenergy technologies is overestimated when biogenic-CO2 flows are excluded. Results based solely on supply-chain emissions can only be interpreted as an estimation of the long-term (>100 years) mitigation potential of bioenergy systems interrupted at the end of the lifetime of the plant and whose carbon stock is allowed to accumulate back. Strategies for bioenergy deployment should take into account possible increases in global warming rate and possible temporary increases in temperature anomaly as well as of cumulative radiative forcing

Long-Term Trends of Atmospheric CH4 Concentration across China from 2002 to 2016

“…The absolute global surface temperature change potential (AGTP) can directly reflect the impact of a certain greenhouse gas emission from the perspective of surface temperature rise [48,49]. The gas emissions (kg) over the time period multiplied by the corresponding warming potential AGTP (K•kg −1 ) can estimate the surface temperature response variations (∆T) [49][50][51]. In this paper, ∆T indicates the warming potential caused by the accumulation of CH 4 emissions during a 15-year time period.…”

From the allocation debate to a substitution paradox in waste bioenergy life cycle assessment studies

“…On the other hand, only two studies (Negro et al 2017;Li et al 2018) selected a mass unit as the functional unit. In addition, 4 out of the 16 studies explicitly stated the use of attributional ELCA (Boulamanti et al 2013;Agostini et al 2015;Giuntoli et al 2015Giuntoli et al , 2016 but all 16 studies conducted the ELCA in a consequential manner. The authors decided to modify the waste management practice of the original system, modelling an alternative end-use of the investigated waste feedstock.…”

Climate, economic, and environmental impacts of producing wood for bioenergy

“…The most recent EU RED policies declare biofuel to be carbon neutral regardless of the source of biofuel (Schiermeier 2018); therefore, energy generating facilities may claim zero emissions even though the fuel producing country incurs an emissions debit in the land sector. However, numerous studies of increasing bioenergy use have revealed that depending on feedstock, changes in the forest supplying the feedstock can have significant impacts on the overall net emissions of GHGs and therefore need to be considered as a significant part of the complete carbon footprint (Agostini et al 2013, Giuntoli et al 2016, Guest et al 2013.…”